He paused aghast at his own incoherent ineptitude. The girl pulled her hand away from him and sat silent staring into the fog. Labar mentally cursed himself as something worse than an imbecile. How could it be supposed that this girl could have any interest in him in that way? If he had waited? Penelope made an impetuous movement. He felt the rough sleeve of his old tweed coat about his neck. A cold face was near his own. He flung his arms about the girl and half laughing, half crying, she settled there in passive content. How long they remained thus he never knew. Night was adding a more sombre tinge to the fog, when she gently freed herself. "I can't believe it," he whispered. "You the wife of just an ordinary policeman." She put her hand in front of his mouth. "A very extraordinary policeman," she corrected with a laugh. "I won't have you call yourself names." He bent and kissed her, and then got to his feet. "Shall we move?" he asked. "You will be getting chilled." Hand in hand like two children, they strolled leisurely into the night and the fog. Although it was a summer night the cold was bitter. There was no possibility of finding a way out of the marsh till daylight or at least till the fog waned, but even a purposeless tramp was better than catching a cold. As they walked they talked of many things, but at last the conversation drifted to the abduction of the girl. Although Harry Labar was a lover, he could not forget that he was also a police officer with an object to achieve. There were many obscure points which he felt that she could make plain, and she spoke without reserve of the events that had brought her into the case. He interrupted seldom, letting her tell the things in her own way until she was finished. "I must have seemed a brute to you," he said. "I know now--I was perhaps able to guess a little even then--that you were shielding someone. I thought--God forgive me--that you might even be in love with Larry Hughes. I had found your photograph in his room, and like a mad fool I jumped to conclusions." "You weren't," she retorted with a faint pressure of his hand. "I can't reproach you with anything. You had to do your duty and you acted like a chivalrous gentleman. My dear, I felt the meanest creature on earth when you would not lock me up. As for the photograph I haven't the faintest doubt that he stole it, or perhaps he got it from Mrs. Gertstein. Now there are one or two things I want to ask you, if you will tell me." Against all the traditions of the Criminal Investigation Department, Harry Labar allowed himself to be pumped by this slip of a girl until she knew as much as he did of the progress of the case. She shuddered and drew closer to him as he told of the fight at "Maid's Retreat," and now and again she elucidated some point that still remained obscure. "And now," he said when he had finished his narration, "there still remains something in the way of cross-examination."